Galaxy: 56-44 to Coalition

GhostWhoVotes reports that Galaxy have conducted their first poll of federal voting intention for some time, and it’s bang on the mark of other recent polling: the Coalition leads 56-44 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of 31 per cent for Labor, 48 per cent for the Coalition and 13 per cent for the Greens. Thirty-seven per cent support the carbon tax (which is apparently “up two”, although I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what they’re comparing it with), with 55 per cent opposed (steady). UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes in comments does my homework for me by pointing out that the point of comparison is this poll from May.

The sample, remarkably, is 2000, producing a low margin of error of 2.2 per cent. Pollsters rarely go this high, as the statistical return on the investment diminishes quite rapidly: a 1000 sample poll gets you a margin of error of about 3.1 per cent; another 500 cuts it by 0.6 per cent; but another 500 only cuts it a further 0.3 per cent. Newspoll approaches 2000 for its immediate pre-election polls, but it does this in order to boost its sample sizes in the smaller states so it can produce credible state-by-state breakdowns. Maybe Galaxy has done something similar here and we can expect more detail to be forthcoming – or alternatively, perhaps the method used is some sort of low-cost alternative to phone polling, such as the automated dialling employed by JWS Research.

UPDATE: Told you so: GhostWhoVotes reports that the figures for Queensland are 59-41 two-party, with primary votes of 32 per cent for Labor, 54 per cent for the Coalition and 8 per cent for the Greens.

UPDATE 2: Further from Ghost central:

In the Sydney Metro area the primaries are ALP 29 L/NP 54 GRN 9. The two party preferred comes to ALP 40 L/NP 60, which is apparently a swing of 13% since the last election …

People that believe that man-made carbon emissions are the cause of global warming has remained steady at 36, while belief in the cycle of nature being responsible rose 6 points to 32 percent.

The proposed tower, which will rise more than 1,000 metres and take just over five years to complete, is the centrepiece of the planned Kingdom City development being built outside Jeddah by Prince Alwaleed's Kingdom Holding.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.